It's pathetic. Last week I was in K-Mart and they already had Christmas trees on display. And as I'm typing this, I'm watching the news featuring Santa Claus on a motorcycle. Did I miss Halloween or something?

(Segue:) Speaking of Halloween, if you had to pick just one candy bar to throw in your sack o' goodies, what would it be?

(And my apologies to anyone who thinks Halloween is a product of Satan, designed to woo people off the straight and narrow, and tempt them to use Ouija boards in order to snare their souls.)

Larry Greenly wrote:And my divorced friend always asks them if it's true his family would live together for eternity. The answer is always yes. And he always asks why he would want to live with his ex-wife for eternity.

This is bizarre. My mother was a member when I was a child and I was forced to have a personal bible study for like three years in addition to going to church three times a week, and I don't recall this being doctrine. And I paid a lot of attention to those things, since my mother's joining that religion pushed the possibility of divorce into the probable range.

One friend of mine has a particular problem with the fact that the JW's don't set any value on higher education, that they have a common goal of making just enough money to support themselves modestly and conduct a full-time ministry once out of high school. He said they should at least send a few to university to study civil engineering, because someone was going to have to make sure that their 'crap' rolled downhill.

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov

Larry Greenly wrote:It's pathetic. Last week I was in K-Mart and they already had Christmas trees on display. And as I'm typing this, I'm watching the news featuring Santa Claus on a motorcycle. Did I miss Halloween or something?

(Segue:) Speaking of Halloween, if you had to pick just one candy bar to throw in your sack o' goodies, what would it be?

(And my apologies to anyone who thinks Halloween is a product of Satan, designed to woo people off the straight and narrow, and tempt them to use Ouija boards in order to snare their souls.)

Heath Bar, although they seem to be disappearing from the shelves. (We actually make a variation of it here - with the chocolate just on one side.)

Getting back to candy, we never know how many kids will show up, so I get something I like; true love doesn't eat it. This can be difficult when buying by the bag at Wally World or some place like that. Hershey's Dark usually does the trick.

Forget the religious stuff. I love Resees Peanut Butter Cups. Do I really have to choose just one? I want my Snickers and my Mounds bars too. I could go on. Any religion that requires the eating of chocolate at festival services will get my attention though. Oh, the Heath bar is definitely on my list of keepers! Good call Chef!

Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knowsThat too many people have died?The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the windThe answer is blowin' in the wind.

Larry Greenly wrote:...Last week I was in K-Mart and they already had Christmas trees on display. ...

Two weeks ago the belt broke on my lawn tractor, so I figured I'd pick one up at Wal-Mart, where I purchased the tractor 2 years ago. I could not find anything in the lawn & garden dept., as that entire section of the store had been cleaned out and filled with Christmas stuff. I found one at a tractor repair shop.
Favorite candy bar? Baby Ruth (more nuts than Snickers). Also Clark Bars (same as Butteringers?). I remember, when I was a kid in Cub Scouts, we would go to the corner store and buy Mallo-Cups (they had cardboard coins you could collect to get more Mallo-Cups) and we would have fights with them, smashing the marshmallow goo and chocolate into each other's hair.

I am trick or treating with James! I am all about the Reese Cup, followed by the Heath Bar, then will negotiate the Butterfinger and Snickers. In fact, a couple of years ago in chat, Maureen and I were waxing poetic about the joys of the Reese Cup when Anders revealed he had never had one. To rectify that abysmal state of affairs, when he came to the States, I enlisted his host to present him with the beloved confection. He was not impressed. Perhaps there is more than taste that we love about the candy bars of our youth?

Larry Greenly wrote:I agree. But Reese's PB cups sure seemed a lot bigger when I was a kid.

Larry, I think you are right. I wonder if anyone could do research on this? Can you find the weight of different chocolate bars over the years? I would think someone is keeping track of this. Or is it some great urban legend we tell the kids like walking to school barefoot in the snow uphill both ways? (That would be two feet of blinding snow at temperatures that would send the average Eskimo back to the igloo.)

Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knowsThat too many people have died?The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the windThe answer is blowin' in the wind.

I'm sure things looked larger because we were smaller, but I'm also sure downsizing has occurred. I would look in old ads with a magnifying glass and see if I could discern the weight. I wouldn't trust the relative image sizes in the ads, though. Remember how they used to make cars look twice as long as they really were?

Larry Greenly wrote:It's pathetic. Last week I was in K-Mart and they already had Christmas trees on display. And as I'm typing this, I'm watching the news featuring Santa Claus on a motorcycle.

The radio program WCRB Saturday Night on Boston's commercial classical music station used to play Stan Freberg's "Green Chri$tma$" the week after the station's owner got the first word of Christmas advertising in local stores.

He finally gave up this tradition after the year that he played "Green Chri$tma$" late in July.

The weight of candy bars changes frequently - you might even say almost constantly. They get smaller and smaller, and eventually they introduce the "king size" bar that looks HUGE, but of course at a higher price. Then the king size bar starts getting smaller and smaller, and so it goes.

Heath Bars are probably my favorite. I might have said Butterfinger at one time, but the stuff they coat Butterfinger with no longer meets even the legal definition of chocolate. That's why the wrapper says "chocolatey"